2007 Oct 31 Beijing by Numbers
3,800,000
The number of calls received by the official Olympic hot line (952008) between 9 and 10am yesterday morning. Due to the system being swamped, ticket sales were suspended later that afternoon. Depending on who you trust more, China Daily or BOCOG , the official ticketing website recorded an average of either 200,000 submissions per second (China Daily) or minute (BOCOG) during the first hour of sales. What makes it worse is that of the 9,000 tickets that were sold between 9 and 11am, 98% were through either the website or at Bank of China branches. According to our math, that means that only about 180 tickets were sold over the hotline.
Organizers have apologized for the “technical problems” and have announced that those who managed to secure tickets will receive them and that they will have the problem solved by Nov 5. The official ticket site now looks like this.
-6
The temperature in Yanqing County last Saturday evening as the mountains in the area received their first fall of snow of the season.
30
The percent by which the number of passengers taking Beijing’s subway system has increased since prices were lowered and the No. 5 subway line opened in early October.
330
The height in meters of Beijing’s tallest building. The huge tower (the third phase of the China World Trade Center or Guomao Sanqi) that is going up on the corner of East Third Ring Road and Guanghua Lu in the CBD has finally stopped growing. Although the building won’t be completely finished until mid-2009, it reached its full height at 10.50am on Oct 29. The tower, which boasts 74 stories above ground and four below, will be home to offices, a five star hotel and - just what the area needed more of - a luxury department store. The project was officially approved in August 2002 but the workers didn’t start digging until June 2006.
555
The seating capacity of Airbus’s new A380 superjumbo, which touched down at Beijing’s Capital Airport last Friday. According to reports, the airliner was unable to take VIP passengers on a test flight due to the heavy fog covering Beijing on Friday. You can take a look at this clip on Youtube (which seems to be available again!).
561
The total length of Beijing's subway line in kilometers come 2015. Once the "Three Rings, Four Horizontals, Five Verticals and Seven Rays" have all been completed, Beijing is expected to surpass New York as the city with the world's longest subway line.
17,860
The number of copies of the hot-of-the-press Chinese translation of the final book in the Harry Potter series sold in Beijing on Monday. The Beijing Book Building led the field with 12,500 copies walking out the doors of the store in Xidan.
23
Kilometers in length of a string of firecrackers let off by government in Hunan province who were attempting to break a world record. The string took over one hour to explode and connected Dayao Town to the downtown area of Liuyang City, which also just happens to be home to one of the largest firework factories in China.
3,216
The number of Chinese men with the name "奥运 (Aoyun)" or Olympics.
120,000
The distance from the earth that China's moon probe Chang E No. 1 reached on Tuesday evening, as it boldly went where no other Chinese satellite has gone before.
Links and Sources:
The Beijing News: image
The Beijing News: 抢购奥运门票
QQ: 世界最长鞭炮湖南完工 重2900公斤长23公里(图)
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The rate of obesity in Beijing’s snow people population has risen by approximately 95% in the last 5 weeks, government officials say.
Spring Festival Text Messages
Aside from feasting, watching Zhang Ziyi's poor attempt at lip-syncing on TV and letting off truckloads of fireworks, Beijingers were also busy sending off text messages to friends and family on Spring Festival eve. The official numbers haven't been announced yet, but China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) was forecasting that across the country more than 17 billion Spring Festival greeting messages would be sent via mobile phone over the holiday season. In Beijing alone 600 million text messages were sent on Chuxi (Spring Festival Eve), which works out at close to 38 texts per person. This number is up from 400 million last year.As in previous years, a contest aimed at discovery the best Spring Festival text message was held.
Get Ready for Grit
Spring is right around the corner, and with that comes the annual spring sandstorm season. For newbies to Beijing, this means a few months of dust and dirt blowing through town like a vacuum cleaner on reverse, and when it gets bad, conditions can be downright apocalyptic.2008 is looking especially grim, according to the Beijing Meteorological Station, which is predicting as many as 11 days of dust storms this year due to a warm winter and less rainfall in the desert areas surrounding the capital.
Xinhua reports that recent years have seen an average of 9.7 days of dust storms, though last year saw only three blow through town. But because 2007 saw 11 percent less precipitation than the average levels of previous years, spring is indeed looking like gritty.
Better dust off those facemasks now.
Holy Smoke, Beijing!
Break out the masks, folks!
According to the State Environmental Protection Administration, the brown haze that descended on our fair city hit a whopping 421 on the Air Pollution Index today. To put that in perspective, on a good day it hovers between 50-150. On a bad day, we're looking at 200 or so.
In fact, today's smog is so bad that the American Environmental Protection Agency rates it as Condition Maroon - or Hazardous. They even go so far as to advise "AQI values over 300 trigger health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected." Doctors recommend not undertaking physical exercise outside, and limiting exposure to the pollution.
Not a day to be leaving the house, if you can avoid it. And if you do, make sure you mask up!
Beijing by Numbers
2, 889, 900
Number of passenger trips recorded on Beijing's subway system last Friday, Nov 16. A new record for the swamped system whose load has increased dramatically since last month when line 5 opened for business and fares were reduced to 2 kuai. As we discovered recently when trying to take a train home from the Dawang Lu station, Fridays are the busiest days. Two weeks ago during the evening peak hour the station was closed for 20 minutes due to platform overcrowding.
We have People's Daily to thank for this prize quote from a Beijing Subway official:
"Passengers should go to work earlier and come back home later than usual, so as to avoid transport peak."
34.5
Percent of the city's commuters choosing public transport. This is the first time this number has exceeded the percentage of people driving a private vehicle to work (32) since figures were first recorded in 2001
